Review:
With record-breaking advance orders of 300,000, “She Loves You” became the first million-selling single in the UK KL-95 and was the song that launched Beatlemania in the UK. AMG The song became the biggest single of the sixties CR-830 and was the top-selling UK single until 1977 when the Wings’ “Mull of Kintyre” (led by ex-Beatle Paul McCartney) passed it. SF

It spent a whopping 36 weeks on the UK charts, marked by two stints at #1. It held the top slot for four weeks, slipped, and then climbed back for another two-week run after a seven-week break. It was their own “I Want to Hold Your Hand” which dethroned them the second time, making the Beatles the first artist to knock themselves off the top of the UK charts. TB-56

In a reversal of the British charts, “She Loves You” followed “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to the pinnacle of the U.S. charts. Capitol Records broke the Beatles in the U.S. with the latter song BR1-144 and then Swan Records re-released “She Loves You.” In an unprecedented achievement, TB-56 the Beatles followed that with a third consecutive chart-topper in the U.S. with “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

Paul McCartney explained he’d planned on an answer song to Bobby Rydell’s “Forget Him” in which “a couple of us would sing ‘She loves you’ and the other ones would answer ‘Yeah Yeah.’…So we sat in the hotel bedroom for a few hours and wrote it; John and I, sitting on twin beds with guitars.” SF

Resources and Related Links:

Note: Footnotes (raised letter codes) refer to sources frequently cited on the blog. Numbers following the letter code indicate page numbers. If the raised letter code is a link, it will go directly to the correct page instead of the home page of a website. You can find the sources and corresponding footnotes on the “Lists” page in the “Song Resources” section.